JUSTICE KATIYO AND THE SHOCKING JUDGMENT THAT NEVER HAPPENED

In Zimbabwe we are used to many strange things under this corrupt system, but this new story about Justice Never Katiyo is one of the clearest signs of how deep the rot has gone in our courts. A High Court judge is now at the centre of a scandal so serious that many lawyers say it looks like open fraud. It is about a ruling that he wrote on 28 July 2025 for a case that was not even heard yet. The case is between a Bulgarian state company called Technoimpex and a Harare businessman named Rajendrakumar Jogi. The hearing is only set for 15 September 2025, but somehow the judge already wrote a full judgment and pretended the hearing had taken place.

Lawyers from Sinyoro and Partners, who act for Technoimpex, were shocked when they found the judgment. The ruling says the provisional order was removed and the whole case was taken off the roll. But the matter has not been heard, and there is still another application that must be dealt with before anything else can happen. An interlocutory application is normally used to settle small issues before a real hearing starts, but here the judge acted as if everything was finished.

What makes this worse is that the judgment claims that Advocate Thabani Mpofu appeared in court and made arguments for Technoimpex. It also says lawyers D. Sanhanga and L. Uriri came for the other parties. Everyone involved says this never happened. No one appeared before the judge. There was no hearing. There were no arguments. The whole thing was just made up.

Sinyoro and Partners wrote to Mpofu to ask what was going on. They told him they had taken the judgment from the court file and asked him when he appeared and on whose instruction. Mpofu was shocked. He quickly wrote a letter to the Registrar of the High Court saying he never appeared, he never spoke, and the judgment was not true. He said the document was “totally made up” and also revealed that this was not the first time Justice Katiyo had written things and claimed Mpofu said them when he had not. Mpofu said the judgment for a case not yet heard was a serious wrong and damaged the court’s honesty.

The law firm then went to the judge directly, hoping he would admit the mistake. But he did not. He insisted the lawyers had appeared before him and made the submissions written in the judgment. This shocked the law firm even more. They took the matter to the Judicial Service Commission and wrote a long letter on 31 July 2025. In the letter they said the actions were close to criminal behaviour. They said it was worrying that the judge insisted there was a hearing when it was “objectively impossible.” They also said the protection for their client was removed without a hearing on purpose, simply because due process was seen as an obstacle.

The lawyers also told the JSC that this was the second time the same judge had written a judgment on a matter that had not been argued. They said this raised real fears of bias and misconduct. They asked if the judge wanted to defeat their client’s rights and called for a full investigation.

The letter was copied to many top people in the legal system, including the Chief Justice, the Judge President, and the Law Society. With foreign money involved and the courts now under a spotlight, pressure is building. What happens next will show if Zimbabwe can still fight abuse of power or if the system will again protect those who break it from inside.